


Three In The Burning-verse

by beetle



Category: Buffy
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three drabbles written for the spander132 moodring prompts: quixotic, calm, and crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three In The Burning-verse

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not my bag, baby!  
> Notes/Spoilers/Warnings: All-human AU (surprise, surprise). All in the same 'verse.

**Little Voice**

  
  
Everyone has that little voice in their head, the one that makes them say or do things that can’t be taken back.  
  
Mine caught me unaware, in a moment of post-coital stupidity.  
  
“Tell me something about you, Xander. Something no one else knows?” He asked, last night.  
  
So I told him something about me  _no one_  else knows and he promised it wouldn’t change how he felt about me, wouldn’t change anything.   
  
I slept better than I have in twenty years.   
  
But this morning--the morning after--two things  _have_  changed.   
  
He’s now a liar and I’m now alone.  
  
  


**Crucible Philosophies**

  
  
Life’s only tragedy? Not coming out ahead.  
  
It’s this crucible philosophy that helps a ten year old boy survive a fire, in which three people die.  
  
Two of them are no great loss--but the third death destroys something in him, something he’ll never get back.   
  
Call it innocence, call it a soul.  
  
 _Whatever_ that _is,_  he thinks with the dull pragmatism of the traumatized.   
  
But Xander Harris--Xander  _Rosenberg_  has finally came out ahead in his disaster of a life--will  _always_  come out ahead, from this point on.  
  
Who knew it was as easy as lighting a match?  
  
  


**Something No One Else Knows**

  
  
“Tell me something about you, William?”   
  
My return to consciousness finds me bound to my chair and drenched in petrol, choking on the thick, cloying fumes.  
  
My captor looms above me, matchbook in hand, face pale and expressionless. His voice is soft . . . barely audible. “Something no one else knows?”   
  
One look into his empty, miserable eyes and the realization comes, as if it had been waiting for just this moment:  
  
“I still love you.”  
  
I suppose they're the last words I’ll ever say. Crazy thing is--they’re perfectly true.   
  
“Love you, too, Will.”  
  
Xander takes out a match. Lights it.


End file.
